The True Meaning of Hotel California

this video is sponsored by skillshare the first thousand people to go to skl.sh polyphonic zero eight two zero will get two months of learning absolutely free this video was also made possible by my incredible supporters on patreon this was one of my first stretch goals for patreon and i'm really really excited to hit it you guys are incredible and you help make this channel possible so thank you so much i don't remember the first time that i heard hotel california honestly i doubt that a lot of us do for those who were born after its 1977 release hotel california has become a kind of cultural pillar it's always been there in movies on music lists getting regular circulation on classic rock radio stations but more important than that it's been talked about since before there were video essays and reddit threads since before there was genius and music forums people have theorized as to the true meaning of the song and today i'm here to tell you definitively what the true meaning of hotel california is let's take a closer look okay so as cool as it would be if i could tell you the true meaning of hotel california that's just not possible there is no one true meaning to any song and anyone who tells you otherwise is selling something but even if there was i don't think that's the most interesting part of hotel california i think it's far more compelling to look into how the eagles were able to craft a song so mysterious and so memorable that its lyrics still captivate music fans to this day so that's what i'm going to do in this video along the way we're going to look at some of the many interpretations of the song and we'll learn what was on the eagles mind when they wrote it now we can cue the music hotel california started its life in the malibu beach house dawn felder had rented the place for the summer and sat in the bedroom with a 12-string guitar one july afternoon he developed a handful of melodies and put them to tape with a four-track recorder one of these melodies was an eerie piece made from descending arpeggios when felder handed his tapes over to don henley it was this descending riff that caught his bandmate's ear henley was driving through california at night and the music's dark creeping sounds seemed to provide a perfect soundtrack most of the eagles were still relatively new to california at the time including henley himself in an interview with team rock he said that he and his band mates viewed beverly hills as a mythical place it was a place full of hope and dreams where miracles could and did happen but it was also a hollow place full of excess using felder's riff henley and fellow lyricist glenn frey began to pen lyrics explaining their feelings about california but the lyrics weren't only inspired by their own experiences they were also drawing on the world of literature the atmosphere of hotel california was inspired by the mages a 1965 novel by john fowles that book follows the story of nicholas urfee a young teacher who travels to the island of fraxos in greece while there he meets a rich recluse named maurice conscious unbeknownst to nicholas conscious runs him through an elaborate series of psychological experiments shifting the world around him until he loses any sense of reality this surreal unreality resonated with henley and frey who saw parallels between fowl's protagonist and their own experience in california so they set out to make lyrics that would create that sense of unease in an interview with cameron crowe frey explained we take this guy and make him like a character in the mages where every time he walks through a door there's a new version of reality we wanted to write a song just like it was a movie in that same interview frey said the band were trying to make the lyrics cinematic mentioning the twilight zone as another influence we see this cinematic lyricism in the opening verse it's a sensual song describing the smell and feel of the air and it puts the listener in the same headspace as the main character entering into a strange and unknown world on a dark desert highway cool wind in my hair warm smell of colitis rising up through the air that sense of unreality and confusion pervades the next two verses our main character flashes through a series of rooms peering in on strange scenes and having eerie conversations in between we're treated to a bright cheery chorus that serves as a sharp contradiction to the atmosphere of the verses welcome to the hotel california such a lovely place such a lovely place such a lovely face when we look at this through the context of the eagles california experience a clear meaning emerges there's a bright image of california home to hollywood and the music industry it's a world of beautiful people and beautiful beaches of huge concerts and huge houses it's a world that so many people aspire to a world that seems idyllic from the outside in the first verse our hero enters the world but already he gets a sense of its risks and i was thinking to myself this could be heaven and this could be hell in the second verse we get to see the glamour of california with the wealth and parties but there's also something lost when the hero asks for wine so i called up the captain please bring me my wine he said we haven't had that spirit here since 1969. for many this line represented the shift in the music industry through the 1960s rock and roll felt like it was part of a revolution the psychedelic movement was filled with utopian optimism and an authentic belief in finding a better way to live but as the decade turned the music industry grew jaded and cynical it turned out that the promise of revolution was easy to sell and the music industry turned into a living experiment in cutthroat capitalism meanwhile the mind-expanding psychedelics gave way to newer heavier drugs cocaine and heroin took over the music industry and it became a world of excess in the third verse we see this play out and we learn about the dark underbelly beneath california there's a glamour but there is also a rot at the core of the rockstar lifestyle and in the song's famous final couplet we learned the greatest horror of all you can check out anytime you like but you can never leave try as you may to escape the world of fast money and hard drugs it'll always call you back from some distant hallway when you know the intentions of henley and frey it's easy to read hotel california as a cautionary tale about the hollywood lifestyle but that's not the only meaning people have pulled from the song the eagles themselves have also described it as a loss of innocence something echoed in a popular interpretation that says the song is about a romantic relationship in the first verse the hero is desperate and alone but then he meets a woman and they marry in the second verse things become rocky as materialism creeps into the relationship and the hero yearns for better times in the past and then in the final verse the character tries to escape the relationship tries to get back to who he was before but in the end he knows that he has changed from it another interpretation reads the song as being entirely about drugs khalida's being code for marijuana and the mirrors on the ceiling being a cocaine reference one of the most popular readings of all reads it as a religious allegory with the hotel being a metaphor for hell once again this reading is easy to see in the lyrics as it's a song full of religious references so why is it that there are so many takes on hotel california well i think this speaks to the way the song was written the eagles specifically wanted something open-ended glenn frey even once said vagary is the primary tool of songwriters henley had similar responses when pressed on the meaning of the song talking with joe seder about the line that refers to wine as a spirit henley had this to say that line in the song has little or nothing to do with alcoholic beverages it's a socio-political statement my only regret would be having to explain it in detail to you which would defeat the purpose of using literary devices in songwriting for the eagles the beauty in music lies not in its clear messages but in the way that its messages openly defy clarity the nature of songwriting lends itself to metaphor and open-ended interpretation and that's a good thing hotel california stays open-ended thanks to masterful use of metaphor and symbol humankind is drawn to symbols we always have been it's a function of pattern recognition in our brain left over from our hunter-gatherer ancestors every culture has its own complex language of symbolism and that inevitably makes its way into their art hotel california is ripe with symbols and metaphors that resonate with western audiences the biggest of these are of course the christian references whether we're religious or not we live in a world shaped by christian symbolism and mythology we all know that heaven and hell represent any of the thousand binaries in life and that candles and bells are representative of ritual and ceremony on the other hand we all understand at least to some level the mechanisms of wealth and materialism so we know that images like champagne tiffany's and mercedes are not simply statements of objects but instead are representative of the world that creates and promotes these objects the eagles sprinkle these kind of familiar symbols throughout the song and i think the greatest example of this is the very setting for the song the hotel hotels are uncanny places strangely familiar yet somehow off so many of them try to look and feel the same trying to recreate the familiarity of home but of course they'll never truly be home with smiling doormen and picture-perfect rooms there's something about hotels that's always just slightly off and there's horror to be found in that dissonance it's no coincidence that just 51 days after the eagles released their hotel horror stephen king published the shining an all-time horror classic set in a haunted hotel as a symbol the hotel can be anything from an industry to a country from a state of being to the very afterlife itself for the eagles it allowed them to describe their personal experiences and for the audiences it became a blank canvas to project our own meaning onto it can be about the excesses of california but that's not all it has to be it can be about the temptation of sin it can be about the troubles of navigating a relationship and it can be about the dark shadows lurking behind any number of bright facades in all of our lives the lyrics of hotel california are nothing short of a masterpiece they're simultaneously narrative and poetic creating a kind of beautiful ambiguity as a writer i personally aspire to someday write like that and that's why i loved hanifab durakib's writing for expression on skillshare that course teaches you how to use poetic language in any kind of writing be it original fiction works or video essay scripts and that's just one of the thousands of courses that skillshare has to offer skillshare is an online learning community for creative and curious individuals where millions of people come from across the globe to share their expertise and learn new skills from others members get unlimited access to thousands of classes on a whole host of topics so if writing isn't your thing you can also check out my friend thomas frank's class on mastering habits in that class you'll learn how to set realistic goals for yourself and how to go about reaching them so if you want to get started today go to skl.sh polyphonic zero eight two zero the first thousand people who click on that link will get two months of skillshare premium absolutely free and after that an annual subscription is less than ten bucks a month not only will you get free access to thousands of courses by following that link but you'll also be doing a ton to help my channel and to make it so that i can keep putting out these videos week after week so thank you guys so much you

Channel: Polyphonic

Views: 957,518

Rating: 4.8126349 out of 5

Keywords: polyphonic, music, video essay, eagles, hotel california, classic rock, lyrics, lyric analysis

Id: yVkbwqKBO4E

Length: 14min 2sec (842 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 20 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/XD_Various]

Oh I saw this too, I have bell notifications on for polyphonic and I've never clicked on a video so fast.